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seedarklyxeroWelcome to SeeDarkly Sunday DisCOVERies:
a weekly exploration of goth, industrial, & dark alternative cover songs!
First time here? Click here for details from first entry.
Happy April Fool's Day! I've decided the rare occasion of my blog falling on this particular holiday gives me license to go off-format, though only in the technical and humorously rewarding sense! ¯\(◉‿◉)/¯
As much as today's featured cover is by a popular alternative artist well known for her general angst, she takes the shallow nature of this pop song and turns it into insightful and wry comedic commentary of it. It's a cover that literally celebrates its 11 year anniversary today!:
Alanis Morissette - My Humps (Black Eyed Peas)
How a party song like My Humps became popular to begin with is no real mystery. Black Eyed Peas released the track as the third single from their fourth studio album, Monkey Business in 2005. Its video featured lead singer Fergie and back up dancers gyrating to a hooky beat while she sang senseless lyrics about her tits and ass. The video and song were widely lauded as a commercial objectification of women that was reductive and hurtful to feminist ideals. It had been criticized also for being derivative, grossly materialistic, poorly rhymed, and was considered by many music journalists as "the worst song ever written." In later years when the group grew tired of performing the track, even songwriter will.i.am admitted it wasn't the "best lyrically." None of which negated or inhibited its success as one of the groups most popular hits and in 2007 the multi-platinum track won A GRAMMY for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. It was exactly the type of song that former Black Eyed Pea, Kim Hill foresaw the group being pushed to do when she left to pursue her solo career, two years before Fergie joined. She stated she had felt the label was pressuring her to "sex it up" and she knew "a song like My Humps was on the horizon."
That pressure permeates the popular music industry. In one interview discussing her cover, Alanis Morrisette acknowledged this revealing, "a lot of record company members over the years would beg me to write a party song. They'd just be like, you write such intense songs. Can you please just write a party song? And I - at first, I was completely offended, and I said no."
Later, in discussion with her studio, she decided she wanted to write a "really simple" song, the kind her studio didn't think possible for her. It might be that it actually wasn't possible since she then challenged that she would write a song like My Humps and then decided to just cover it.
So after recording a stylistically contrary, darkly humorous and mournful piano ballad version of the song, she got together with a handful of her comedian friends to produce a parody video of it in the garage of her home. It was released to the world on April 1, 2007 on the then still newborn YouTube platform and it became a viral sensation overnight and was one of the single-most viewed uploads at that time. Even Fergie seemed to enjoy the "prank" as reports claim she “thought the video was brilliant” and sent Morrisette a flesh-colored fanny-shaped erotic cake as a personal thank you. Morissette remained tight-lipped about her motivations for what many considered a brilliant April Fool's Day gag for a long time afterward. Eventually she opened up about it saying in one interview, "for me, comedy is great, until it starts tiptoeing into potentially offensive [territory]. I don’t want to offend people and I don’t want to be mean, but social commentary and comedy for me are part and parcel." She also admitted in another interview that she loved highlighting the lyrics "that some people might pooh-pooh and make fun of, but there's actually some gems in there," further citing, "Fergie talking about how it's nice for a woman to stand still and let her man work, work, work, work, work, work."
And her cover absolutely works to satirically illustrate the dangers of consuming a product that propagates or reinforces an ugly or distasteful message, ideology, or social problem. Sure, elevating the success of a pop song you dislike may be a thing of insignificance but paralleled with the programing or media of other pernicious media enterprises, you may begin to recognize how such consumption can have severe consequences. It's kind of amazing the joy and lessons we can get from art which relies on the existence of something of nigh detestable in order to give it meaning.
The Cover:
The Original:
Next week:
Second Sunday Slowly! After five straight weeks of female-fronted covers, "a good thing must come to an end" and the sun will go dark as we feature a two-man darkwave/industrial project and their downtempo take on an 80's track by Swedish pop songstress.
Feel free to tell me what you think about today's cover! Comments, suggestions, discussions, etc... welcome!
(You do NOT need a Dreamwidth account to comment, but all comments are screened for spam prevention.)
For April I'm taking a vacation so I'll only have one gig. That will be on the last Friday for a Vampire party in Western Mass. In May, I'll go back to my regular schedule. As always, check my schedule for details, the RSVP link on Facebook, and other upcoming events and news! ↼‿ಠ
Explore the darkness,
-Xero
Previous DisCOVERies
Mar 25 - Night Club - Need You Tonight (INXS)
Mar 18 - Eva O - The Killing Moon (Echo and the Bunnymen)
Mar 11 - Grypt(w/Myrrh Ka Ba) - Naughty Girl (Beyoncé)
Mar 04 - Ayria - Headhunter(Front 242)
Feb 25 - The Alpha Complex - #1 Crush (Garbage)
Directory of All Previous DisCOVERies
a weekly exploration of goth, industrial, & dark alternative cover songs!
First time here? Click here for details from first entry.
Happy April Fool's Day! I've decided the rare occasion of my blog falling on this particular holiday gives me license to go off-format, though only in the technical and humorously rewarding sense! ¯\(◉‿◉)/¯
As much as today's featured cover is by a popular alternative artist well known for her general angst, she takes the shallow nature of this pop song and turns it into insightful and wry comedic commentary of it. It's a cover that literally celebrates its 11 year anniversary today!:
Alanis Morissette - My Humps (Black Eyed Peas)
How a party song like My Humps became popular to begin with is no real mystery. Black Eyed Peas released the track as the third single from their fourth studio album, Monkey Business in 2005. Its video featured lead singer Fergie and back up dancers gyrating to a hooky beat while she sang senseless lyrics about her tits and ass. The video and song were widely lauded as a commercial objectification of women that was reductive and hurtful to feminist ideals. It had been criticized also for being derivative, grossly materialistic, poorly rhymed, and was considered by many music journalists as "the worst song ever written." In later years when the group grew tired of performing the track, even songwriter will.i.am admitted it wasn't the "best lyrically." None of which negated or inhibited its success as one of the groups most popular hits and in 2007 the multi-platinum track won A GRAMMY for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. It was exactly the type of song that former Black Eyed Pea, Kim Hill foresaw the group being pushed to do when she left to pursue her solo career, two years before Fergie joined. She stated she had felt the label was pressuring her to "sex it up" and she knew "a song like My Humps was on the horizon."
That pressure permeates the popular music industry. In one interview discussing her cover, Alanis Morrisette acknowledged this revealing, "a lot of record company members over the years would beg me to write a party song. They'd just be like, you write such intense songs. Can you please just write a party song? And I - at first, I was completely offended, and I said no."
Later, in discussion with her studio, she decided she wanted to write a "really simple" song, the kind her studio didn't think possible for her. It might be that it actually wasn't possible since she then challenged that she would write a song like My Humps and then decided to just cover it.
So after recording a stylistically contrary, darkly humorous and mournful piano ballad version of the song, she got together with a handful of her comedian friends to produce a parody video of it in the garage of her home. It was released to the world on April 1, 2007 on the then still newborn YouTube platform and it became a viral sensation overnight and was one of the single-most viewed uploads at that time. Even Fergie seemed to enjoy the "prank" as reports claim she “thought the video was brilliant” and sent Morrisette a flesh-colored fanny-shaped erotic cake as a personal thank you. Morissette remained tight-lipped about her motivations for what many considered a brilliant April Fool's Day gag for a long time afterward. Eventually she opened up about it saying in one interview, "for me, comedy is great, until it starts tiptoeing into potentially offensive [territory]. I don’t want to offend people and I don’t want to be mean, but social commentary and comedy for me are part and parcel." She also admitted in another interview that she loved highlighting the lyrics "that some people might pooh-pooh and make fun of, but there's actually some gems in there," further citing, "Fergie talking about how it's nice for a woman to stand still and let her man work, work, work, work, work, work."
And her cover absolutely works to satirically illustrate the dangers of consuming a product that propagates or reinforces an ugly or distasteful message, ideology, or social problem. Sure, elevating the success of a pop song you dislike may be a thing of insignificance but paralleled with the programing or media of other pernicious media enterprises, you may begin to recognize how such consumption can have severe consequences. It's kind of amazing the joy and lessons we can get from art which relies on the existence of something of nigh detestable in order to give it meaning.
The Cover:
The Original:
Next week:
Second Sunday Slowly! After five straight weeks of female-fronted covers, "a good thing must come to an end" and the sun will go dark as we feature a two-man darkwave/industrial project and their downtempo take on an 80's track by Swedish pop songstress.
Feel free to tell me what you think about today's cover! Comments, suggestions, discussions, etc... welcome!
(You do NOT need a Dreamwidth account to comment, but all comments are screened for spam prevention.)
For April I'm taking a vacation so I'll only have one gig. That will be on the last Friday for a Vampire party in Western Mass. In May, I'll go back to my regular schedule. As always, check my schedule for details, the RSVP link on Facebook, and other upcoming events and news! ↼‿ಠ
Explore the darkness,
-Xero
Previous DisCOVERies
Mar 25 - Night Club - Need You Tonight (INXS)
Mar 18 - Eva O - The Killing Moon (Echo and the Bunnymen)
Mar 11 - Grypt(w/Myrrh Ka Ba) - Naughty Girl (Beyoncé)
Mar 04 - Ayria - Headhunter(Front 242)
Feb 25 - The Alpha Complex - #1 Crush (Garbage)
Directory of All Previous DisCOVERies